Like you, we have spent most of this week with our eyes fixed on Los Angeles, where the helicopters (if not the Xboxes) got cameras. We've had conferences from Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Sony and Nintendo, not to mention all sorts of other news, and there's been a lot to process.

Now things have quietened down a little, Bertie, Chris Donlan and I got together and went through the conferences one by one and all the other little delights that have come to our attention. Like Code Name Steam! The game that isn't Advance Wars but scratches the same itch. And Bloodborne! The game that isn't a Souls game but scratches the same itch. We're very itchy, is the general theme.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1685906Thu, 12 Jun 2014 14:00:00 +0100Podcast S2E12: Destiny, D&D and games that feel like work

A better-than-hello (sorry) to news editor Wesley Yin-Poole, who joins host Bertie Purchese and me on the podcast this week, and with good reason. He's been to Seattle - well, Bellevue - to hang out with Bungie and play Destiny, its new not-an-MMO MMO.

He likes it, too, and does a lot to help demystify a game that's only now starting to come into focus. It's all very exciting - but not half as exciting as Bertie and I banging on about what games can learn from Dungeons & Dragons. We've only had one session and we're converts.

Finally, we chat about gaming's complex relationship with work: why do some games feel like meaningful employment while others come off as demeaning slogs? Also, aren't we playing games to avoid work in the first place?

Happy GDC! Happy GDC if you're Sony or Amazon, anyway, as we reckon the former's about to reveal a VR headset and the latter may have an entire console ready to announce - although it may not be quite the kind of console you're used to. Besides that, there are panels on whales in the free-to-play marketplace, panels on misogyny, panels on AI in games like Hearthstone and BioShock Infinite, and panels on luminosity and audio occlusion, although I probably made those last bits up. Oh, and Eugene Jarvis is telling all about the creation of Robotron: 2084. I didn't make that up.

GDC is where the best in the games industry get together to think, then, which is probably why Robert Purchese, Tom Bramwell, special guest Will "Velvet Owl" Porter and I are all back in England, poking through the schedule and pondering what's going on in San Francisco this week. No matter! We also have time to talk about Dark Souls 2 and to ponder which genres could do with a bit of a spring clean - or, to channel Tom, we explore why we really need a football game that comes with a tree on the pitch.

Thank you, whoever came up with the idea at Blizzard for World of Warcraft's critical hit text. The way it balloons then reduces to normal size, as you unpredictably wallop for extra damage, is unforgettable.

That tiny feature is an example of what Christian Donlan was on about when he wrote 'Finding someone to thank for the good stuff'. Games are made up of so many tiny moments, of so many pieces and are crafted by so many pairs of hands, yet only a fraction of people to whom those hands belong are ever really thanked for it.

So here's to unsung heroes of the critical hit text! - a topic we gush plenty about on this week's podcast, the ninth recording of Season Two.

Hello! There's one big story this week: we've all been playing the Titanfall beta, and it's absolutely dazzling. What with giant robots, smart pistols and the fall-out of one of gaming's most intriguing legal disputes, there's something for almost everyone here - and even if you think you don't like online shooters you might want to give Respawn the benefit of the doubt. Be warned, though: you're going to get hop-ons.

Elsewhere, our host Bertie investigates good story-based DLC with the help of editor-in-chief Tom Bramwell, staff writer Tom Phillips and myself, and then he leads us all in a round of The Impossible Sell - a sort of debating-club panel game that quickly deteriorates into a confusing mess. Fun!

Hello again! The podcast is back for another of our fortnightly discussions, and this time we're talking about Nintendo's woes. Is the Wii U dead? Is mobile the future? How can Nintendo turn things around again? I would personally say yes, no, and not sure, but thankfully I'm joined by much smarter people such as podcast host Bertie Purchese, editor-in-chief Tom Bramwell and staff writer Tom Phillips.

Alongside Nintendo, we're also looking at Hearthstone again now that it's finally in public beta, and we're pondering what a lovely job Sony's done repositioning the Vita as the first indie-centric handheld. After that we answer a few readers' letters and we look at the games that are coming out in February. Actually, we do that bit right at the start, but I got myself all muddled up.

Good news everyone! Tom Champion's back on the Eurogamer.net Podcast - at least for this week, when he joins host Bertie, myself, and freelance hero Simon Parkin.

Alongside the bizarre goings on at this month's CES, we're discussing games that encourage you to play with style, and the most interesting people we've ever met in the industry.

More importantly, we also take a look at gaming around the world, from Kenyan micro-studios to Battlefield 4 fans living in the heart of Iraq. There's something for everyone, hopefully - doubly so if you love Tom Champion.

Hello everyone! I hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Year and found plenty of time to play video games.

We all did, at least. This week on the podcast, I join host Bertie Purchese, editor in chief Tom Bramwell and features editor Martin Robinson to look back over the games we enjoyed on our Christmas breaks and to commiserate with anybody who lost to me during a particularly vicious game of Cluedo. Sorry Tom.

We also glance forward to 2014. Which games are going to be good? Which trends are likely to be dominant? Will Bertie ever stop doing his Sly Stallone impression? Find out below - and here's to a wonderful 2014 for you all.

Silent night, holy night, ALL IS CALM, ALL IS BRIGHT. Whoops, sorry, still fiddling with the levels. Hello you! Just a little podcast audio quality-related quip there for regular listener(s). As we close in on the end of the year, we return to a festive tradition I invented last December: the Eurogamer.net Podcast Christmas Quiz!

For the record, I did not invent quizzes outright. In fact, Donlan tells me that the origin of the word quiz is completely unknown. Did you know that? I certainly didn't. And don't worry, it is not a subject covered on the podcast.

Instead, two intrepid teams of Eurogamer staff go head to head for the promise of fabulous next-gen prizes, answering questions based on this year's top stories, big reviews and wittiest straplines, as well as the best game of all time ever. I'm the host for this one, and I am joined by team keys - Oli Welsh and Martin Robinson - and team book - Donlan and Simon Parkin. Don't worry, all will be made clear(ish) in the podcast itself.

This week we're picking over the launch weekends of the Xbox One and PS4. Who sold the most? Who has the best OS? Whose lights look the prettiest when they're signalling a hardware malfunction?

After that, Bertie and I, along with news monster Wesley Yin-Poole and editor-in-chief (monster) Tom Bramwell, have a hunt around for a true next gen game, and discuss the awful fact that Knack managed to out-sell Super Mario 3D World.

Hello, and welcome to a special edition of the increasingly regular Eurogamer.net Podcast!

Today we're talking about the Xbox One. Embargoes have been lifted and Eurogamer's leapt into action, offering a good look at the hardware and - according to the big spreadsheet, anyway - at least one photo gallery of the new console's power brick. Lovely! How do they get that much power into a brick? Let's blow the lid off this witchcraft.

Meanwhile, Bertie and I sat down with editor-in-chief Tom and news man Wesley to discuss what we make of Microsoft's new machine - and launch games like Dead Rising 3 and LocoCycle. Wes also offers his initial impressions of Ryse and Killer Instinct. Apparently one of them's extremely gory.

Hello! We're back with a very special edition of the Eurogamer.net podcast. Sony's PlayStation 4 is almost upon us, and we've all gathered together to discuss what we make of it.

By us I mean Bertie, Tom Bramwell, Oli Welsh and myself. By it I mean the hardware, the (lovely) controller, and a trio of launch titles: Killzone Shadow Fall, Knack, and Resogun. Oh, and I think Tom talks about FIFA too. That is generally a safe bet these days.

What do we make of it all? What's the best game of the lot? What's up with next-gen FIFA's grass? All of these questions are answered below. Hope you enjoy listening, and we'll be back to do it all over again when the Xbox One is ready, too.

Hello! Welcome to yet another Eurogamer podcast, in which Bertie, Martin Robinson, Tom Bramwell and I get together to explain how our Games of the Generation list came to be. And why Spelunky's so high up in the rankings. And why Minecraft's so low. And why there aren't any MOBAs in it. Urk.

Beyond all that, we also cast a wistful glance back at the last generation, pulling out our favourite themes and our favourite moments. Remember when you first climbed the Agency Tower? Remember when you first saw all of your friends playing Oblivion? Remember when Spelunky came third on that Games of the Generation list?

If you're more interested in the future than the past, though, don't worry. We'll be providing podcasts to run alongside our PS4 and Xbox One reviews as soon as the embargoes are up. Sadly, we're not allowed to actually say when the embargoes are up, however. Good times, eh?

You won't believe this - we've done another podcast. We being Bertie, me, and Toms Bramwell and Phillips.

This week, we're discussing Batman: Arkham Origins and Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, both of which Bramwell has been plugging away at for a few weeks. We also tackle the subject of gaming auteurs - hopefully not quite as boring as it sounds - and ponder which of our favourite games could be made into regular series.

Also, I lift the lid on my dream FPS project. It involves shooting squirrels, but only grey squirrels, since they're red squirrel-murdering nightmares. Then we redesign the entire calendar to cram in a few more months. (Looking back, it's possible there was a gas leak in the room while we were recording.)

It's been an exciting week here at Eurogamer. For one thing, we've had a very nice man in to replace a bunch of interior doors. For another, we've been putting together the first Eurogamer.net Podcast in aaaaaages!

After a year of sporadic publication, we're finally relaunching the podcast on a new fortnightly schedule with Bertie as our host. Every second week, a bunch of Eurogamer writers will get together to discuss the most interesting topics in games in hopefully entertaining fashion.

Today it's me, Martin Robinson and dogged news addict Wesley Yin-Poole joining the show. We're talking about Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Blizzard's wonderful new collectable card game that's currently in closed beta, and we also pick over the relatively new phenomenon of early-access games and paid alphas - or at least we do until it degenerates into a ramble about whether or not Godus is a bit boring.

I don't think I'm the only one who's got a problem, but when that problem's staying up until the small hours writing love letters to a bespectacled monkey who I'm pretty sure just wants to be friends it's difficult to do anything about it. Animal Crossing: New Leaf's sucked us all in with a force the series has been unable to muster since the GameCube debut in the West (although I'll admit that Wild World came close), and it's a real rare delight.

There's something subversive about Animal Crossing, whether that's in the melancholy bubbling away under the surface (I bumped into that monkey wandering the trees on her own last night, her snootiness crumbling for a second as she seemed to contemplate her own mortality) or in its wilful slowness. Here's a game where you're punished for running by trampling flowers and sending wildlife scattering, and it's this that sets Animal Crossing apart from the instant gratification of so many of its peers.

So yeah, it's pretty good. Tom Phillips and Chris Donlan got together to discuss exactly how good recently, as well as how it all ends (spoiler: Blathers shoots Nook down in cold blood and whisks you away in his grey feathers to a life free of financial tyranny.)

You've had plenty of time to play through The Last of Us since its release last Friday, so it's time to get down into detail and discuss what we really thought of the more powerful moments in Joel and Ellie's adventure. Oli's already bought you his review, and he's joined by Ellie Gibson as they go through the story's twists and turns and deliver their thoughts on how effective Naughty Dog's been in delivering a more grounded, more human take on a world destroyed. Needless to say, there will be spoilers.

We're hoping to bring you more of these in the near future, with an Animal Crossing one lined up next (spoiler: Nook did it). There's a podcast link at the bottom of the page for you to listen to on the move, but if you're after words and pictures Ian Higton's lovingly put together a video as well.

And here's the podcast link for those who like to do things the old-fashioned way.

Barely a day into the conference itself and E3's already offered up a heap of stupid, but it's also presented plenty besides. Microsoft and Sony's conferences provided the kind of drama we all really live for, while Ubisoft and EA provided the kind of insanity that's normally only in dreams. Yeah, I have really mundane dreams. And don't forget Nintendo, providing the kind of everyday disappointment that's become its stock of late.

The reliably irregular Eurogamer.net podcast is back to try and make some sense of it all, or at least try and help us to temporarily stave off the ill effects of sleep depravation. Sorry if some of that seeps through here.

Bertie Purchese is your host, and he's joined by Chris Donlan, Tom Phillips and Martin Robinson, which is me. Hope you, our dear regular listener, enjoy this - convince a friend to listen in and we may well get round to doing another in the near future.

Last night Sony announced the PlayStation 4 and the world looked on. We were introduced to Sony's next decade of gaming and perhaps the last traditional console upgrade it will ever produce. Did Sony get it right?

It was a long night. There was honesty, sense and a humbleness about Sony that wasn't there when PS3 was announced. A timidity, too?

There were some glaring omissions: we didn't even see the PlayStation 4 console itself. But we did see real games rather than target renders. And we did hear about some of the clever functionality Sony's new games console will boast.

You didn't really think we'd be gone forever? That's right! We're back! At least for this week! The podcast will relaunch properly in 2013, but after a spell on the sidelines while we concentrated on the Expo and the Q4 release schedule, we're very happy to bring you this one-off Christmas quiz special.

I am your host for this one, and I am joined by two eager teams of competitors keen to claim the fabulous prizes I mention in the intro. Over the course of an hour, Ellie Gibson, Chris Donlan, Bertie Purchese and Tom Phillips face unbelievable tests of mental and occasionally physical fortitude and dexterity as they deal with questions based on some of the key issues of 2012.

Who will prevail? The only way to find out is to listen. Or to skip to the end, but that wouldn't be much fun.

This year at the Eurogamer Expo we decided to depart from our usual "Ask Eurogamer" panel session and do one focused on game reviews. As our panel host Ellie Gibson noted during her introduction, this is because everyone just asks us about reviews anyway.

Rather than just witter on about what we think, however, we thought it would be interesting to invite some other people onto the panel to rake over the subject. In addition to Eurogamer features editor Martin Robinson, we were pleased to welcome John Walker from Rock, Paper, Shotgun, James Binns from PCGamesN (also former head of games at Future Publishing) and PR professional Stefano Petrullo, who works at Ubisoft but was not representing the views of his employer (nor was his unironic medallion).

We don't spend that much time around here inspecting our journalistic navel, but since people found it interesting we thought we would stick it up on the site so you could check it out too if you want. You can watch a video below and we've also produced it as a podcast in case you want us in your ears rather than your face.

Why only post-mortem new games? Why not, say, reach back in time for one of the best-loved role-playing games, try and track down the key people involved, and gather them for an hour-long chat and post-mortem?

Maybe they haven't spoken in a long time. Maybe they've got a new perspective on what they once created because of the path their life took since then. And maybe it's just nice to reminisce.

Why not, indeed. And so I present to you an hour-long Planescape: Torment post-mortem.

"Freedom is not going to protect itself." If there are any words that more accurately summarise Eurogamer's position on the War On Terror, then I have not made them up yet.

With this in mind, it was only natural that a few of us would get together and embrace Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Valve and Hidden Path's new take on the elder statesman of the modern military shooter crowd. This week we try to convince you to do so too.

Counter-Strike has a reputation for being difficult to pick up, but that was forged in the old days when it was a Half-Life mod. Nowadays it's full of ways to get stuck in without much prior knowledge, including two excellent new modes: Arms Race and Demolition.

Are you still playing Spelunky? We're still playing Spelunky. Mossmouth's roguelike underground 2D platform game has captured our imaginations like nothing we've played this year, including previous podcast favourite Fez.

This week we've decided to devote an entire show to the game we've already given 10/10 because, as Chris Donlan says at one point, we're genuinely beginning to wonder if we will ever stop playing it.

There are so many things to admire, from the perfect attack angle of the humble bat to the post-death window onto a giant fish humping your corpse, the spikes, the evil monkeys, "I hear rushing water", the kissing booth music...

It was amazing to everyone here when we discovered that Simon Parkin, who has been part of the Eurogamer family for many years, has never appeared on the podcast. As soon as we found out, we cleared the schedule (not that we had one) and booked him in.

That's not all he does though. He also makes games for Littleloud and, er, probably some other stuff. To me he's just Parkin. To celebrate his inclusion on this week's podcast, we talk to him about his career, games journalisms stuff, making games, and we even resurrect Sandy Isle Games in his honour. How many JRPGs will Simon take to his island? Find out the answer by listening to the podcast.

Ah, the past. Do you remember that? No, not that bit, the bit slightly before that - when ice lollies had jokes on the stick and people used phone boxes to make phone calls rather than taking drugs and urinating.

It was great. It had those things, the ones which were much better than the ones we've got now - they were good. What happened to those? I bet they still make them somewhere. Brilliant.

Also, there were some games. Games made entirely of squares and only the colours available to the most basic of Crayola fun-packs. Games which came on wax cylinders packed into crates delivered by carriage. Games with names like Fat Worm Blows a Sparky, Penetrator and, wouldyouadamandeveit, Battlefield. Mostly, they were a bit crap, but sometimes, they were, in the parlance of the day, ACES.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1502743Tue, 31 Jul 2012 17:00:00 +0100Eurogamer.net Podcast #121: One Of Us Is Wearing A Hat

Holy hell it's hot all of a sudden. After months of rain, the sun has got his hat on and he won't f*** off. The good news, then, is that THQ has chosen this exact moment to send me a Russian ushanka hat to keep warm while celebrating the forthcoming release of Company of Heroes 2. If you want to see what I look like with that wedged onto my massive head, check out the video version of the latest Eurogamer.net Podcast below.

Or just listen, if you think the sight as well as the sound of me, Bertie and Tom Champion will offend you. This week Champ, with his usual diligence and studious planning, has assembled an in-no-way last-minute diverse collection of questions from our patient social media audience about the latest trends in gaming (F2P, Wii U, DLC, Viva Pinata, Dirk Kuyt, that sort of thing), which he puts to Bertie and myself. We offer some answers to those as well as home remedies for an ear infection and other vital updates.

Exciting stuff. Next week, hopefully a game will come out or something. Join us again!

Welcome listener(s)! Or should I say streamer(s)? Sony will certainly be hoping you enjoy a bit of the old content streamage after splashing out $380 million to buy David Perry's cloud company Gaikai yesterday.

Inevitably we spend much of this week's podcast discussing the deal and its implication for gamers and the games industry. I'm joined by Eurogamer's Bertie Purchese and the Velvet Owl himself, Will Porter, to ramble through the ramifications.

What's Sony said it plans to do? What's the reaction been like from press and industry? What does this mean for OnLive? What are the challenges Sony faces trying to build Gaikai into the future of PlayStation? What about its TV business, phones, laptops and tablets? How tall is David Perry in real life and does he cheat at poker?

It's Tuesday at 5pm, which can only mean one thing: we've managed to publish the Eurogamer.net Podcast on time on the right day for once! Thank you for your ears.

For this 117th instalment, we thought we would bring together several titans of UK games journalism to discuss the issues of the day. When we couldn't get them, we fell back on me, Chris Donlan and Martin Robinson.

As for the issues of the day, we felt those were Spec Ops: The Line - due out from Yager and 2K this week - and EA COO Peter Moore's comments on a future of free-to-play games and microtransactions.

The topic of the day is Nintendo's new console, which Robinson and I went hands-on with last week. We have frank discussions on which foods you could balance on the Wii U tablet controller, what part of the system may need a coathanger-based peripheral and why Martin was forced to play decomposing zombie game ZombiU - twice.

Hello you! Welcome back to normal service on the Eurogamer.net Podcast. After last week's brilliant Eurogameological crossover series with the Gameological Society's John Teti in LA, this week we're back in rainy/sunny Brighton with me, Oli Welsh and Robert "Bertie/Birdie" Purchese.

Having rinsed E3 for stories and info last week, attention for podcast 115 turns to, er, E3, and more specifically where the f*** was the next generation? I grill Bertie/Birdie and Oli for info on what they saw of it at E3 and it turns out there was quite a lot, what with Watch Dogs, Square Enix's Luminous demo and Epic's Unreal Engine 4 session.

Since I started playing Skyrim again at the weekend and everything is all about me, we also talk about Dawnguard, the upcoming expansion for the aforementioned mildly popular role-playing game. Birdie got to play it at E3 and regales us with stories of being a Vampire Lord or one of the boring individuals hunting them. (Although to be fair they can have a troll pet.)

It's been all too brief, but now we bring our fling with The Gameological Society to a close with the third and final or our joint E3 podcasts.

Today, Gameological editor John Teti and Eurogamer's Oli Welsh are joined by Gameological contributor Gus Mastrapa. Their topic: anything and everything on the middle day of the show, always a blizzard of appointments and games.

The trio talk Warner Brothers' brave new brand synergy strategy, The Elder Scrolls Online, Star Wars: 1313, Sim City, Wonderbook, the mystery of five players, Oli's extraordinary encounter with John Carmack, and more, including mourning the absence of last year's official Game of the E3 Podcast.

Day two of our joint podcast with The Gameological Society is actually day one of E3, as the show opens its doors after the last of the press conferences. We could hardly find the enthusiasm to go on though, after Nintendo lifted our hopes and then dashed them on the ground.

Eurogamer's Rob Purchese, better known to almost everyone as Bertie, joins Oli Welsh and Gameological editor John Teti today to talk about that cruel disappointment, as well as an extraordinary encounter with noted rapper Snoop Dogg, the video games bible (no, not that one) and some actual games. Well, one.

John, Oli and Bertie spend a few brief, precious minutes extracting the good points from Nintendo's presentation (Pikmin 3!) before facing the awful truth - Nintendo had every possible advantage, and it bombed horribly. Still, there's always Reggie's zombie incident to laugh at/give you nightmares.

Eurogamer.net is proud to join hands across the ocean (not literally - we're in the same room right now) with The Gameological Society to present our first ever joint podcast!

Our host is sometime Eurogamer contributor and now Gameological editor, John Teti, and he's joined today (as he will be for the next two days) by Eurogamer's reviews editor Oli Welsh. If this all sounds familiar, it's because Oli and John recorded Eurogamer's E3 podcast together last year.

They'll be joined by a different guest each time, and today it's the turn of Matt Martin, editor of Gamesindustry International. Their topic is - what else - Sony and Microsoft's E3 press conferences, perhaps the most torpid start to an E3 in living memory.

The games industry may be about a lot more than just Mario, Master Chief and Nathan Drake these days, but once a year for one week only we get to completely forget that and party like the Console War is the biggest show in town all over again.

Yep, it's almost time for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, where over 100,000 people (or whatever figure ends up on the press release - it bloody well feels like a lot of people when you're there) descend on the hateful Los Angeles Convention Center to see what the games industry has been up to lately.

This year promises a proper Wii U reveal from Nintendo (we'll forget about last year's), new first-party games for PS3 and Xbox 360, and doubtless lots of proclamations of (carefully) measured success on Nintendo 3DS and PS Vita. (Meanwhile, up the road in San Francisco, Apple will probably announce the iPhone 5, which will sell more than all of this lot put together.)

Seems like, in 2012, the bigger the game launch, the more furious the message-board outcry that surrounds it. We've had the uprising over the Mass Effect 3 ending, and now it's all about Diablo 3 and Error 37gate. Meanwhile, Rockstar, previously the champions of popular outrage, barely raised a heckle with Max Payne 3; gratuitous violence is so nineties.

Anyway, a game as big and contentious and, let's face it, interesting as Diablo 3 offers plenty to talk about - so on this week's podcast Oli Welsh, who reviewed the game for Eurogamer, and Chris Donlan, who reviewed it for [REDACTED], join Tom Champion to get stuck in.

Of course, there's plenty of debate about the game's permanent internet connection requirement and Blizzard's botched launch, and Oli reveals how he changed his mind about it over the course of the last week, and discusses the difficultly of factoring these kinds of issues into reviews.

While the world warms itself around the burning servers of Diablo 3, a swollen team takes to the mics to discuss everything other than the one game that's on everyone's minds. Though if you care to watch the video version you'll likely see some right index fingers impatiently clicking away on an invisible mouse.

Joining regular host Tom Champion is Gamesindustry International's own ray of sunshine Dan Pearson, and he's flanked by the only marginally less miserable Martin Robinson, who regales the crowd with wondrous tales of far away lands (Millbank Tower, London) and the curious creatures within (David Rutter and his FIFA team, all showing off the recently revealed FIFA 13). Tom Bramwell, meanwhile, has been spending his nights shooting up tramps with a bitter alcoholic by his side. And he's been playing Max Payne 3 lol.

There's also a mildly diverting game of questions and answers that remains informative for a handful of minutes before descending into sexual threats and pondering which species Tom B would rather see extinct.

Eurogamer.net Podcast host Tom Champion has been ill! He's been as sick as a dog. A rescue dog. A rescue dog with fleas, and with arthritis in its back legs. Poor mutt. But he's back now, and so is the podcast.

Only, well, I wish he'd done some preparation. Instead, in he wafted with no bloody idea what was going on. The real patients (test subjects, even) were to be Tom Bramwell and me, Robert Purchese, his guests.

But it was calamity averted when Champion looked for a champion among you, our listener(s). In a moment of delirious ingenuity he gathered your questions, thousands of them (well, a couple of dozen), cobbled them together and fired them pow-pow-pow at our faces.

Hello! It's Wesley, your friendly neighbourhood news editor here. Don't worry, I haven't sensationalised the story with this headline, or taken anything out of context. This really is the Eurogamer Podcast 110 and it really is about Dishonored, Medal of Honor, Crysis 3, SimCity and Project Zomboid!

Unfortunately, it's not about Chelsea's glorious Champions League semi-final victory over Barcelona. No sir. Because we recorded this before the match. But I thought I'd mention it. You know. Since it was glorious, and all.

Ready your accusations of bias, because this week's Eurogamer.net podcast is a bit of an Xbox-fest - by accident, not design, we promise. That's if three awesome 360 sort-of-exclusives releasing in the space of six days is an accident! (It probably is.)

Toms Champion and Bramwell are joined by Oli "gaming's Andrew Marr" Welsh this week to talk about the progressively less snappily titled Fez, Trials Evolution and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings - Enhanced Edition. There's a special treat for those of you that stick it out to the end (and yes, we will know if you fast-forward).

First up is Polytron's swoonsome Xbox Live Arcade adventure game, Fez, released last Friday and reviewed rather favourably by Oli. Find out why Brammers shouldn't be scared of its mind-bending concept and what Champ, who hates platform games and puzzles, thinks of this puzzle platformer.

Outside of a few evergreen titles like Gran Turismo, Forza Motorsport, F1 and Mario Kart, the racing game genre has been in a state of chaos and decline for a few years now, with great games like Blur and Split/Second pitching up to fanfare from genre fans and then disappearing into bargain bins a few days later. We love them, but the audience just doesn't seem to be out there.

So the odds were that Ridge Racer Unbounded was going to struggle whatever happened when you put the disc in the drive, and the Ridge Racer brand's own creative decline since Ridge Racer 6 half a decade ago probably wouldn't have helped. Not content with those obstacles to success, however, the developers then created another one of their own: they failed to explain how the game worked.

We've been over this enough on the site already, so we'll just say that if you would like to hear in detail the story of "the fun button" and the total lack of reference to it in Ridge Racer Unbounded, check out this week's podcast. We've spoken to developer Bugbear Entertainment since the game was reviewed, too, so we also have an update on a possible patch for the issue and their reaction to the news that people were struggling. Somewhat harrowingly, it turns out the game originally had a tutorial... which was removed right before release.

Once in a while, we all get a bit drunk and say something inappropriate.

It used to be that this only came back to haunt us when we said that inappropriate something via text message to a gitrl ew relly liek and we shudl get a drnk sometiem. But nowadays, thanks to the miracle of the internet, we can say it to potentially thousands of people at once.

Now, there's no suggestion that OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter was drunk when he told his followers on Twitter that former employee Shay Pierce was "the weakest one on the whole team", "selfish" and one of a "number of failures who try to ride on your back" - indeed his comments had the lucidity of immaculate sobriety - but it would have made more sense if he were. Otherwise he was just making very rude, ill-judged comments in public.

Fresh from the Eve Online Fanfest 2012 in Iceland we have John Bedford. Fresh from Guild Wars 2 developer ArenaNet in USA we have Robert 'Bertie' Purchese. And fresh from his chair we have Tom chickety-Champion!

Bertie spent two days at Guild Wars 2 HQ, rapping with the team, cruising the office, DESTROYING the game. What's the Guild Wars 2 crib like? What are the crazy cats making it like? What's Guild Wars 2 like? Bertie totally SPITS it.

Hello! Welcome to the one hundred and fifth Eurogamer Dot Net Podcast, in which we successfully wrestle John Bedford in front of a camera (not without complaint) to talk about his recent trip to Blizzard's HQ in Irvine, California, to see next World of Warcraft expansion Mists of Pandaria.

No one told me they videoed it! No one! The podcast, videoed?! How was I to know? Not that I mind of course. You may remember my starring role in Sacred 2: The Video Game (there wasn't a film, I'm trying to elevate its prestige). But you couldn't sleep with me in Sacred 2. It wasn't Mass Effect 3.

And Mass Effect 3 is what we're talking about this week in the Eurogamer Podcast, officially numbered 104. And by we I mean me, Bertie Robert Purchese (that's Purch-ess, in case you've ever wondered); Tom "Does All the Work" Phillips; and Tom Champion.

We, no doubt like you, have been playing BioWare's climactic tour de force, Mass Effect 3. But we've been playing it in different ways. That's the point. BioWare wants you to play your game your way, and influence the world and universe around you. What was an intriguing idea in 2007, a saved game to span the trilogy, has now been fully realised - and has real repercussions to how Mass Effect 3 plays out.

Hello! Someone's smacked the industry with a stick and a bevvy of games have come flooding forth. There's a third game in a series that's actually the fifth, a fourth that's really the sixth and one that pretends that it's not a sequel at all (it's in fact the fifth). Games!

Tom C's enjoying a late winter break in the Big Apple, so we bring you another two Toms as some compensation (that's Phillips and Bramwell, the latter stepping in as this week's host).

Oh, and there's me, Martin, as well (with the beard, looking shifty - which you can see for yourself if you wish to watch the video version).

PlayStation Vita launched in Europe last week. You probably noticed. Now, after a few days soaking up sales, we can report what we had always hoped: not only is Vita the handheld gamers deserve, but it is the one we need right now. In your face, Batman!

UK hardware sales figures are Chart Track's proprietary information, unfortunately, so until Sony talks about them publicly we can't say how many it sold in week one, but we can say it was healthier than some critics predicted, and the sight of two Vita games - Uncharted: Golden Abyss and FIFA Football - atop the UK charts is illustrative of lots of interest. Not only that, but Chart Track doesn't account for digital sales, and this is a fully digital console, so they are potentially a lot greater.

The Vita launch, our impressions of the European software line-up and general feeling about its prospects understandably form the backdrop to this week's 102nd-ever Eurogamer.net Podcast, "starring" host Tom Champion, myself and Oli Welsh.